Cause and Effect

See these headlines? Not the Peres trying (again) for presidency. The ones about the Kassam rockets.
The first headline says that a Kassam rocket hit a Sderot house. Is this making echos in the MSM*? Shouldn't it? People from Gaza, a territory Israel has completely evacuated (never mind whether this was a good or bad decision), are shooting rockets in the one and only aim of hitting as many Israeli Jews as possible. The fact that they usually miss and that there aren't many victims is beside the point. They are shooting rockets into a neighboring country for no reason. Ahhhh but there is a reason, I can already hear those voices echoing all over. There are reasons, they are oppressed and occupied and they are freedom fighters fighting for their freedom.
Oppressed? By who? Not the inhabitants of Sderot. Or any by Israeli citizen. Remember the Disengagement in 2005?
Occupied? By who? Not the inhabitants of Sderot. Not by any Jewish or Israeli occupier.
Freedom fighters? How is shooting rockets at innocent civilians going to make anyone any more "free"?
No. There are no excuses.
They are shooting rockets at innocent civilians. They want to kill and maim as many innocent Jewish Israelis as possible.
Second headline: Mashaal is saying the rocket attacks will continue. Precisely those rocket attacks that are being shot just because they might land on Israelis and kill them. Make no mistake. They are shooting rockets at innocent civilians and they will continue.

And then, obviously, whoever gets attacked has to reply. In this case, Israel. Israel, whose army, the IDF tries to minimize civilian deaths as much as possible. The IDF, whose soldiers are not there on some personal vendetta nor do they believe that if they get killed in mission they will become holy martyrs and have 72 virgins waiting for them. The IDF soldiers are there because their country needs them, but as soon as this conflict is over, all they'll want to do is go back home and continue "life as normal". The sooner these conflicts end, the better.
You can tell by the second headline that this is not the case for the other side.

Yet MSM doesn't think this is newsworthy. Oh, when Israel responds to these rockets, then the MSM will wake up and report all about the Israeli "overreaction". Never mind the rocket attacks that started up the whole situation in the first place. No no no. Cause and Effect has no importance when reporting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The only thing of any importance is what Israel did wrong.

But is Israel doing anything wrong at all? Were Belgium to randomly fire deadly rockets into France, what would France do? Well, the France of a few weeks ago would probably install a new Vichy regime (snicker, snicker) and promise to move the targeted civilians closer to the border with Belgium. I hope that Sarko would reply with a fierce attack which would have the general idea of "If you attack us, it means you want war, so if it's war you want, it's war you get". Don't get me wrong, I'm not some war loving freak who reels at the thought and sight of blood and gore and guns going off. But when I get attacked, as a citizen of a certain country, I expect my government to do its utmost to protect me. Otherwise what's the government there for? It sure isn't very useful for anything else... (but that's a completely different matter, and I tend to digress rather quickly).
I was saying, if any country on earth would be attacked by its neighbor, not only for no reason but after very painful concessions given to that very same neighbor, that country would answer back and do it with force. No one would question its motives. Unless that country is Israel. So point your finger at us.

Al Pacino said it best:
"You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fingers and say, that's the bad guy. So what's that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide."


For more information about what's going on in Gaza, I'll point you to Israellycool, who's doing a complete coverage of the conflict.

*MSM stands for MainStream Media. Acronym taken from Littlegreenfootballs.com. No use in making up my own when Charles' are the best already.